I'm giving up (at least temporarily) my attempt to LWify WOTC into an acceptable state. WOTC introduces fun concepts but it's still so lacking in strategic depth *cry*. After seeing faket15 share his LW 1.5 bugfixes, I decided to return to the real deal with the goal of actually finishing a campaign for once. Victory *lol* or defeat, it doesn't matter as long as I finally reach that campaign summary!

I've no reason for modifying psionics. Make PsiOps Great Again just looks well-made and worth trying out. Use My Class and Xylth's GTS remove much of my agonizing over rookie blackjack and GTS promotions. I want to play the game, not entertain a million what ifs. Reliable Ever Vigilant is for doors, loot and other silly things - not free reloads.

I don't have a strict format planned. Probably I'll just ramble about decisions, mistakes, and particularly epic eucatastrophes. Feel free to give me advice. I fully expect to lose, but I hope to have fun doing so.

Engage the officer and his lackeys with overwatch from above. No survivors.

Move a couple scouts forward tentatively. Grunts activate on their turn and scramble out of LOS. Next turn they run into my overwatch trap and I continue to clean up all but the engineer who hung back. Lock him down with red fog, flashbang and advance.

Sectoid and trooper fly in flanking Darby and threatening yellow alert. Trooper takes the shot. Darby's down to one HP. Panic sets in quite literally. Darby hunkers down in her exposed position *cry*. She was part of the advance on the engineer and the entire squad is behind her, too far away to nade the new threats both dug in behind full cover.

Eliminate the engineer with a stupid kamikaze run with the only guy who could reach. Redirect everyone else to setup lame overwatches against the bunkered enemies. Toss a frag and flashbang (probably a mistake) at the sectoid. Leave one brave soul standing in the open to hopefully draw fire away from Darby.

Trooper for reasons unknown makes a run for it and dies to a lucky reaction shot. Sectoid slinks sneakily away from all my lame overwatches and executes Darby... It is at this point I must resist the urge to start a new campaign. I hate that feeling. I hope it dies with my soldiers. At least the sectoid is in a silly position. He drops four annoying flank shots later.

Gatecrasher: Darby Cobb -KIA- "She had a cool hat." -Thomas Watson

***

I play too fast and loose. It's rare that my soldiers are in good positions for any activation after the first. I should have known the sectoid pod was close. I'd heard the chittering ahead and slightly to the right while I was waiting for the grunts. In hindsight, the pod was probably on a flank maneuver. Moving Darby there was a totally unecessary risk. It wasn't even a great position to take out the engineer the next turn. If I hadn't flashbanged the sectoid, maybe he would've raised instead. The kill shot was probably very high priority though. And I expected the trooper to finish the job anyway. It seems odd he wanted to reposition; he was in a great spot.

Forgive the lack of detail in this post. I wasn't planning to keep a log when I started this campaign. If certain information interests you, let me know and I'll try to track it.

Modular Weapons then Resistance Communications because I forgot how to play the game. I found a basic hair trigger on Gatecrasher that I really felt like leveraging *what*. And I started construction on the GTS to get a couple Trial By Fire officers started. Scanned up three missions then contacted the Black Market.

I wasn't happy at all with the Rescue Engineer From Cell. It popped with something like five days and I didn't have enough squaddie power. The other two missions were already infiltrated two days and I couldn't shuffle operatives. I geared up five soldiers with plans to boost but should probably cancel or face serious loss of life.

Van is pretty far away. It's against the side of the map but facing the wrong direction. I decide to stealth to the van to make sure I beat the timer. Spot a solo drone and two pods of two along the way. Sneak everyone behind the van with visibility only to the last pod of three puppy guarding the goods.

I have this ridiculous idea that I can somehow eliminate this pod of three, not activate the pod of two on the other side of the van, throw the evac, then clamber in the van to shut the doors and wait for our ride. Alas, reality.

Overwatch springs downing the engineer. Troopers take cover; one overwatches. Sectoid knows what's up and raises the recently deceased from off screen. Shinobi reveals to remove the overwatch with a shotgun blast. Specialist jumps into the van, takes cover behind the chest and hacks it at the last second. Rookie nades the zombie inflicting enough red fog to buy a turn for Gunner to suppress the remaining trooper.

Sectoid and trooper spot Shinobi around the van. They split up on the corner of the van. Suppressed trooper probably shoots and misses. Zombie walks up to Gunner to say hello. Yellow alert shot from the sectoid takes Shinobi down to three HP. He retaliates with his sword for not nearly enough damage. Rookie yolos a flank on the last trooper from the guard pod and manages a kill with his SMG. Specialist hops out and blasts away the newly activated trooper around the side of the van. Gunner stabby stabs the zombie with his giant knife and runs into the middle of the street to loot *lol*. Sorry Shinobi, but you're probably going to die.

Second two man pod - sectoid, sentry - enter the scene. New sectoid Ctrl-Zs my last trooper kill. Old sectoid relocates and single-handedly resets the timer - this time for Shinobi. Gunner falls back, grabs more loot, flanks that silly sectoid, and with his huge gun repays him for spoiling my ridiculous plan. Rookie pushes forward to full cover and drops a nade on the remaining sectoid. Specialist max rolls to put down the raised trooper for the second time.

Drone zooms in to investigate. Yellow alerts Rookie on his flank. Sectoid and sentry advance - no connections. Specialist frags the sentry leaving him at one HP without cover. Disoriented Rookie finishes him off. Gunner advances and suppresses the drone still flanking Rookie.

Drone misses. Sectoid panics Rookie. Evac lights up. Time to go. Specialist runs around the van to pick up Shinobi and exfiltrate on the last turn of bleedout. Gunner backs up to the evac zone and waits for Rookie, suppressing the drone again.

Drone misses. Sectoid overwatchs. Rookie comes to his senses and tries to pull the overwatch in high cover while he makes a break for the evac. Hit. Panic. Gunner reloads and suppresses the drone a third time to protect little Rookie attempting to hide in the open surrounded by flares.

Wow, that was a fun mission! Failing stealth and then recovering is the best. Topher carried everyone (including me). I knew taking the stealthy approach was risky, but I didn't think I'd be able to make it to the objective in time otherwise. I was only held up one turn during map traversal by enemy detection radius and still only got to the chest just in time. Although, if I'd taken the combat approach I may have been able to blow the side off the van and hack from a distance. But then I would have been engaging most of the enemies at range when I'd brought two shotguns. If you have thoughts on semi-stealthing vs. going loud immediately on hack missions, I'd like to hear them.

I would not advocate boosting ordinary GOps. Expanding sooner will probable be more valuable. Missing a mission isn't the worst. (Other mission types you might try with 2 soldiers, but probably not a van rescue as they usually bunch around the van.)

I wouldn't flashbang a sectoid unless everyone's in good cover, because then you force him to shoot. The shot is often more dangerous than a psi attack early on. (Unless you need to get out that turn and can't have anyone panic, or you don't have a flashbang and you don't have a shinobi.) If you offer an unflashed sectoid a flank he is more likely to take a shot but he may still use psi instead.

Xenos' Phobia wrote:I'm giving up (at least temporarily) my attempt to LWify WOTC into an acceptable state. WOTC introduces fun concepts but it's still so lacking in strategic depth *cry*. After seeing faket15 share his LW 1.5 bugfixes, I decided to return to the real deal with the goal of actually finishing a campaign for once. Victory *lol* or defeat, it doesn't matter as long as I finally reach that campaign summary!

I've no reason for modifying psionics. Make PsiOps Great Again just looks well-made and worth trying out. Use My Class and Xylth's GTS remove much of my agonizing over rookie blackjack and GTS promotions. I want to play the game, not entertain a million what ifs. Reliable Ever Vigilant is for doors, loot and other silly things - not free reloads.

I don't have a strict format planned. Probably I'll just ramble about decisions, mistakes, and particularly epic eucatastrophes. Feel free to give me advice. I fully expect to lose, but I hope to have fun doing so.

Do you have a link to faket15's 1.5 fixes? I can't seem to find them. Thanks in advance

Semi-stealth for the earlygame, "loud stealth" when you have the tech advantage. "Loud stealth" meaning some spec 'stealths' to the hack objective regardless of no concealment - Advent never see the spec. The spec is plenty useful without any LoS to an enemy. Anything that might find the spec is pulled in by noise, snipes, combat protocol (preferably from a 2nd spec) or plain just dashing bait past their eyes.

SpinDoctor wrote:Do you have a link to faket15's 1.5 fixes? I can't seem to find them. Thanks in advance

Psieye wrote:"Loud stealth" meaning some spec 'stealths' to the hack objective regardless of no concealment - Advent never see the spec. The spec is plenty useful without any LoS to an enemy. Anything that might find the spec is pulled in by noise, snipes, combat protocol (preferably from a 2nd spec) or plain just dashing bait past their eyes.

Thanks for this. It makes a lot of sense. Going full combat on timed hack missions usually just meant taking risks to me. It's nice to go in with a plan. I usually build overwatch specialists, but I'll try out some more utility specs for this strategy.

Xenos' Phobia wrote:I have this ridiculous idea that I can somehow eliminate this pod of three, not activate the pod of two on the other side of the van, throw the evac, then clamber in the van to shut the doors and wait for our ride.

I've been thinking more about this. What if it didn't matter that I activated everything on the map? Couldn't I just throw the evac, sprint everyone into the van, and then close and block the doors until the evac popped? I'd probably need to reload to fix LoS on the doors once inside, but I might try this next time.

Xenos' Phobia wrote:I have this ridiculous idea that I can somehow eliminate this pod of three, not activate the pod of two on the other side of the van, throw the evac, then clamber in the van to shut the doors and wait for our ride.

I've been thinking more about this. What if it didn't matter that I activated everything on the map? Couldn't I just throw the evac, sprint everyone into the van, and then close and block the doors until the evac popped? I'd probably need to reload to fix LoS on the doors once inside, but I might try this next time.

In general, it's never a good idea to activate everything on the map at once, because you leave too many uncontrolled enemies running loose. One uncontrolled enemy left in a turn, is one too many. Also, shutting doors doesn't always prevent them from knowing where you are and "seeing" you. Game bug I guess.

Once upon a time I saw someone (probably on reddit) lament that there weren't enough (if any) published examples of campaign failures, and I thought to myself, I can probably fail. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the failing has commenced!

I didn't boost since I reached V.Light and that was a silly idea in the first place. I also didn't abort like I said I should, which was definitely not a silly idea. Instead, I decided to at least scope the map layout and just stealth to the evac if I had to.

VIP and evac were close to each other on the far side of the map. I can do this I thought. Then I got trigger-happy and blew it. By it I mean concealment - way too early. I have no justification. It was bad. Ambush was fine, but then I activated two more pods with a wide flank *lol*. I think there were nine active at this point.

Flanker went down into bleedout. I should have written him off immediately, but after clearing all but two enemies with some some nifty shots, I ran Sharpshooter into the open to stabilize. I thought only two sectoids were left active on the other side of the map. Nope, one of those sectoids was acting on yellow alert and there was actually a sentry hiding nearby who sent my sniper into bleedout.

I had no more medikits because I'm an idiot. Sharpshooter is way too far away from the evac to save. But sunk opportunity cost, I thought I could still save Flanker. Reinforcements drop, more bad stuff happens, etc...

End result: Success! Four KIA. One captured. VIP rescued.

***

Here are some things I'll pretend I learned.

It's okay to skip missions. This also makes more sense of the expansion fervor many players exhibit. I never quite accepted the urgency since I wouldn't be able to run all the missions anyway. Don't run them all. Besides keeping down regional vigilance, expansion alleviates the penalty for skipping a mission here and there.

V.Light is a big deal. I'm used to choosing high risk for high reward, but that's because it was never really high risk with bronzeman - just high frustration. Feeling the weight of my decisions is exhausting and liberating at the same time. Strange.

Stick to the plan. Seriously, why didn't I just stick to the plan.

Bring more medikits. Even just to stabilize soldiers to be left behind and captured.

Gunners rock. They control what you can't kill, they don't leave things standing with one HP when they connect, and they fend off zombies with their little knives.

Good advice I should've listened too. Granted I didn't read it until after I ran the mission, but I already knew it was a bad idea to launch. I need to move past the "I've already lost this campaign" mentality that plagues Long War. I admit there was a little bit of "if I miss this engineer my campaign is doomed" going on inside my head. That's ridiculous, of course it wouldn't be. Maybe I'm a little closer to doom after squad wiping, but even then, probably not much. This will be a good experience to push through. It'll be tough, yeah, tougher than if I hadn't screwed up, but I'm tired of waiting for the stars to align. Queue up the crash and burn sequence.

I'll concede that there are points where campaigns become very unlikely to achieve victory. If your end goal is just to get to the victory screen, that's fine, start over.

The issue was that you sent an underpowered team when you should have been sending a good one. If you didn't have one available then you should have skipped, because on missions with fixed evac one thing going wrong like losing conceal on turn 1 can mean squadwipe with a poor composition. Team should have had more AoE smg soldiers like technicals and grenadiers and less slow people like... Sharpshooters and Gunners duh.

My basic GOp squad composition is: Shinobi (you ALWAYS need to have a scout. Don't blow your concealment) 2 Rangers, Shotgun Assault, Grenadier, Specialist. Grenadiers don't get a vest, only flashbangs and grenades. They are there for crowd control, not to get mixed up in the fight, so leave them behind the front line. I (generally) only take sharpshooters or gunners for untimed missions, HQ, troop columns, or supply raids, etc. Give your shinobi/scout the ghostwalker, covert perks. The first one you have is just a scout, not a fighter. The stealth perks will come in handy when the Vigilance Dark Event pops.

Infiltrate to EX light and vulnerable in the early stages. 74% is not enough. The object is to gain some EXP, not get everyone killed. Only bring 1 rookie at a time, until you get your GTS going. Skip unnecessary missions. I only go for engineer/scientist/liberation missions in the beginning.

Scout around till you find the first pod and only engage that one, from a place of good cover and high ground if possible. Don't go running around into the fog of war if you don't have to. Pull back if necessary, then scout forward. Engage pod by pod. My playstyle is to only build right side, overwatching Rangers with high aim, and I typically start the engagement with a grenade (or sharpshooter if I have one) and have the enemy run into my overwatch. That becomes a bit less effective in the later game, but having 2 Rangers with Rapid Reactions can clear a pod in one turn for most of the campaign.

Never OW your assaults. They need to have their Run and Gun for cleanup. My Assaults only shoot when they are standing right next to the enemy. Never more than 2 tiles away. Give them the best laser sights you have and Talon rounds. Assaults can get themselves into some dicey situations, so they need good defense and good armor/vests. They need very high mobility. Aid protocol will help them out early on, or later when you get officers, you can command them back to your lines. Speaking of officers, I typically only make my Shinobi's officers, since they can usually see everyone, and are just sitting around most of the time. Contrary to popular belief, Shinobi's don't really need that much mobility, although high mobility is always good.

Before you start an engagement, you should always be thinking, "how can I kill everything this turn."

That's a good idea early on - especially sharps. I think Snaphsot sharps and high mobility gunners have their place in certain GOPs and strats, but I admit I have not been playing well to their strengths thus far in this campaign.

SpinDoctor wrote:Give your shinobi/scout the ghostwalker, covert perks. The first one you have is just a scout, not a fighter.

I'm not sold on Ghostwalker. It has tough competition in Lone Wolf and Blademaster. My shinobis end up revealed more often than not and +10 aim is amazing. On the other hand, I plan to give Covert to every shinobi since it's passively useful and up against much weaker perks. Scout shinobis are great if you can bring enough DPS without them, but I find early-game is when my shinobis need to be taking out the baddies to pick up the squads' slack. I'm also miserably failing early-game right now though...

SpinDoctor wrote:Only bring 1 rookie at a time, until you get your GTS going.

Rookies aren't so bad; not more than 50% rookies seems more reasonable/feasible.

SpinDoctor wrote:Pull back if necessary, then scout forward.

Ah! Now here is something I need to practice - tactical retreat to regroup. I just had a bad activation yesterday where I moved forward with my assault to scout, didn't see anything, and then hunkered down instead of pulling back. Two pods walked into me.

Jailbreak was fine. E.Light with six soldiers. Took a wound because I flanked my technical to burn a sectoid and only his tile caught. Probably would've been okay except I didn't give the sectoid anywhere to go so he stood still and returned fire.

Resistance Communications into Basic Research. I built a research calculator at one point and decided at least one basic research early on was always worth it. Especially since you usually don't have enough materiel for other projects yet.

Contacted my second region. It's at three strength, so I'll leave it on recruit for a bit until I have more ranked soldiers. Also might pull a desperately needed rookie in.

***

I ran a few more missions and got my first flawless on a Smash & Grab. I also had another setback on a Liberation 2 where I lost concealment too early due to unexpected LOS to a rooftop. I had geared the squad up for a fighting retreat, not a forward push, so it didn't go well. Success, but with more losses.

Research: MW RC BR HM >L

I recruited a few soldiers, purchased one shinobi from the Black Market, and started training my first officers - both shinobis. I contacted my third region, also at strength three, but my second region has cooled down while on full recruit (and I even contacted a couple soldiers). I think I'm at twenty soldiers with one Cpl as my highest rank, so feeling pretty behind on that front. Especially now that vipers are showing.

***

It's been a mess so far with launching missions I can't handle then paying for it. Dwarfling nailed it. I'm sending underpowered squads - duh. I rely too much on soldier count instead of properly weighing each soldier's individual value. I also have particular difficulty with fixed evac mission types. Reflecting on past playthroughs, fixed evac is often my downfall. Compromise on squad composition is mostly to blame (although my tactical could use a fair amount of work as well). I fix up every mission piecemeal, which is theoretically the most efficient way to manage squads, but in reality I'm often left with several rejects I'm tempted to throw on one last mission. I've never actually utilized the squad management feature before. Maybe it could help to ensure I'm not overpowering one mission at the expense of underpowering another.

You seem to be finding your own style, which is very cool. Composition wise, I tend to balance the strong with a weaker soldier or two. You end up with two strong squads pretty quickly as the EXP starts to add up. I usually end up with 3 strong squads that can handle pretty much any mission and a 4th that is mainly for nice to do/easy missions.

Most people don't seem to use it, but I use squad management from day one.

While I appreciate you intended this to be "here's the base template to make per-mission adjustments to", it's worth emphasising that it's a mistake to treat all GOps the same. Fixed evac vs evac flare is an obvious one, but so too is "when will RNF arrive?" and "long or short timer?" In particular, note that S&G have zero RNF (until the timer) no matter how little you've infiltrated or how big the Str is. Some adjustments on the fly will be needed after you touch the ground: is that fixed evac near the start or near the objective? I also find it useful to divide individual missions into separate phases. "Run & Gun into shotgun face" is a "late phase" tactic, like "everyone go into OW and then break concealment" is an "early phase" tactic. I won't dictate how you solve the problems but it's useful to approach them from enough directions.

Regarding "leftover classes jammed into the last squad": note that most classes can pretend to still be double-frag SMG rookies. In the earlygame, that might be what's needed to get an unfit class to not be deadweight on a mission. Contemplate what missions such a ragtag squad would still be ok at.

@Psieye: Those are all good points you make. However, concerning Assaults, for me the shotgun to the face is a day one tactic, typically killing the last remaining high HP enemy from a particular pod. When 90% of their shots will crit, I can't see not using it. Late game, Assaults are useful crowd control soldiers with chain lightning. But as you say, the battle itself dictates what will happen. Game difficulty also plays a huge part so all my advice is pretty much just things to consider.

DfA sharps are actually ok on straight extracts. Lots of rooftops and you don't actually have to go that far. But they are horrible on jailbreaks unless you get lucky with evac placement.

Left side rangers and gunners are pretty good on hacks and destroy beacon, because you tend to get to the objective and then stay there fighting for several turns. But again less so for jailbreaks, van rescues etc, although arguably high mobility gunners can be useful on most missions.

Technicals are always very powerful early but you'll get more value if the missions starts with concealment and you have a chance to flame activate.

I would also argue you don't need shinobis on every mission. Eg an ex light hack or destroy relay, you ambush one pod and then just press forward carefully. They are more important for missions with no starting concealent and missions with long distances to cover.

Not my point. I said "early phase" and "late phase" to disambiguate from "earlygame" and "lategame". I should have been more explicit and outright said "first pod" vs "last pod". You're not going to have Assaults live long if you Run & Gun on the first pod of a mission, regardless of if it's earlygame or lategame.

Incidentally, a lategame Assault for me is someone consistently (read: no use of Command) putting shotgun to face 4 times in one pair of Player+Enemy turns. The same face, 4 times before that face gets to roll Aim to shoot back.

Not my point. I said "early phase" and "late phase" to disambiguate from "earlygame" and "lategame". I should have been more explicit and outright said "first pod" vs "last pod". You're not going to have Assaults live long if you Run & Gun on the first pod of a mission, regardless of if it's earlygame or lategame.

Incidentally, a lategame Assault for me is someone consistently (read: no use of Command) putting shotgun to face 4 times in one pair of Player+Enemy turns. The same face, 4 times before that face gets to roll Aim to shoot back.

Based on your previous posts, since I've come here, I can say pretty confidently that your tactics and mine are very different. So trying to have this kind of discussion is frankly pointless. I already know you like maps full of enemies, so that difference alone makes conversation a moot point. I do high number missions, if it's worth the risk, but the EXP gains fall off pretty quick so constantly doing that the whole campaign is an unnecessary chore. Generally. with the tactics that I use, it's very rare that the enemy pod ever gets to shoot. I never leave uncontrolled enemies running loose.

Anyway, for what it's worth, I've never had an Assault not kill his target during whatever engagement he was assigned, and I've never lost one. I certainly can't ever imagine taking 4 shots to kill an enemy (that wasn't a Sectopod) with ANY soldier type, much less an Assault. So to be honest, that just sounds like bad tactics. It was the wrong tool for the job. All you have to do is pay attention to the HP. Additionally, you don't just charge them into the middle of the pod and hope for the best. You do actually have to judge when the time is right to use them. Nothing about this game is rocket science, so I don't feel that all the overthink is required. But hey... Your mileage may vary...

It's like playing poker. Some guys have to look at all the math and statistics and some just play by understanding the mechanics of the game.

SpinDoctor wrote:Based on your previous posts, since I've come here, I can say pretty confidently that your tactics and mine are very different. So trying to have this kind of discussion is frankly pointless.

Actually there is a point to this discussion: Xenos' Phobia is my primary audience in this thread. What you, SpinDoctor, take away from this discussion is of secondary importance for my post. We each present our views and it's up to the primary audience what to make of it.

SpinDoctor wrote:you don't just charge them into the middle of the pod and hope for the best. You do actually have to judge when the time is right to use them.

Which is my point: you don't charge them into the middle of unexplored territory where the NEXT pod might be. We also disagree on what "controlled" enemies are, but that one's definitely on me as I have a weird definition.

All fair enough. I guess that I did miss the point you made about mission phases (early, late, etc). I've never actively thought about it in those terms as it's something I just do without thinking much about it. Every unit has a time when it's actions and perks are more or less optimal during an engagement.